


A Danger, a Choice, and a Lie

by Papapaldi



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dream Sequence, Gen, its a little bit thasmin, just a sprinkle for the gays, maximum angst in 15k words, past tea Gets Spilled, people you thought would never have a conversation are now having one, the doctor is not happy about it, the dream lord roasts 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22572601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papapaldi/pseuds/Papapaldi
Summary: “I’ve done this before,” she hissed, tilting her chin up, staring into his face. His familiar face. “I know how this goes, you’re a manifestation of the darkest parts of myself – so why are you him?”He grinned; all teeth, split lips. Wicked. She remembered that smile, and the icy, glinting eyes to match. “Why do you think? You’re ashamed of your past, more than you’ve ever been. The worst thing you can imagine is them – your little friends, that is – finding out the truth about you, and so here I am.”“My worst nightmare,” she said, a cold smirk playing at her lips.The Dream Lord is here, and he's wearing a familiar face. Fourteen of them, in fact. Meanwhile, Ryan, Graham, and Yaz take a trip through the darkest reflections of the Doctor's past friends, and are forced to face the truth of the person they are travelling with.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Everyone, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Comments: 47
Kudos: 286





	1. The Countdown

**Author's Note:**

> 13 got a break from angst this week with Praxeus, so I thought I should make her suffer. This is just my excuse to write conversations between characters that will never occur anywhere in canon, and to expand on the fam and their motivations/fears a little more. Also angst.

She awoke with her head resting against the underside of the console, grease through her hair and grit under her nails. Working – as she always did when her humans were sleeping. Evidently, the work had become too much. Despite her determination to hide the fact, Time Lords needed sleep too. She winced as she detached her head from its resting place against the cold metal of the console’s base, a bruise already beginning forming there, and a tight ache stitching up her neck. As she sat up straight, she noticed a figure towering over her, a wicked grin spread across his face. Black-coated and silver-haired; her previous face. 

“Hello Doctor,” he waved. A casual flick of those long, knobbled fingers. She remembered having hands like that, so different to the ones she had now, frozen in the act of unknotting the muscles in her neck. It was nauseating to see him standing in front of her, so used to looking out from behind his eyes instead of into them. Nauseating, and entirely impossible. 

“What,” she muttered, scrambling to her feet with a sudden, clumsy urgency. 

“What indeed.” 

She stood, fists clenched by her sides, hair wild and coat streaked with engine grime. “How can you be here?” 

“Don’t you recognise me – we’ve met before, though I looked a little different. I was a little less… direct.” He took a few paces forward, drawn and drawling, like his voice. 

“What do you mean?” she snarled. Teeth clenched and nose twitched up. Eyes dark. She didn’t like not knowing. It wasn’t him – the Doctor – there was something cruel and hollow about him, distorted like a funhouse reflection, or a face obscured in the dark. 

“Need a reminder? Getting forgetful in your old age?” He smiled, and at the wave of his fingers, the sound of softly chirping birds filled her ears. Leadworth birds. She blinked, stumbling back against the console, overcome with exhaustion. “That’s quite enough of that,” he said, snapping his fingers. Instantly, the chirping stopped, and the Doctor righted herself, shaking sleep from her mind. 

Her glassy exhaustion quickly turned to burning malice. “You,” she snapped. The Dreamlord. A reflection of all the darkness held within – of which she had an awful lot. 

“Yes,” he shrugged, still smiling. “Me.” 

“I’ve done this before,” she hissed, tilting her chin up, staring into his face. His familiar face. “I know how this goes, you’re a manifestation of the darkest parts of myself – so why are you him?” 

He grinned; all teeth, split lips. Wicked. She remembered that smile, and the icy, glinting eyes to match. “Why do you think? You’re ashamed of your past – more than you’ve ever been. The worst thing you can imagine is them – your little friends, that is – finding out the truth about you, and so here I am.” 

“My worst nightmare,” she said, a cold smirk playing at her lips. 

“Believe me, the feeling is mutual,” he regarded her with a wrinkled nose, contempt laced through every line of his face. “I made a big speech and everything, I thought the instructions were fairly simple.” He began to pace, to circle her, gaze lording over. “Never be cruel, never be cowardly,” he regaled with a teasing grin. “Try to be nice – well, you’ve got that one down, haven’t you? – at least where your new friends are concerned. But kindness, oh,” he grinned, “you’ve got none of that. Always lying, lying through your smiling teeth. As if you could leave everything behind,” a pause in his step, a raised eyebrow, “love.” She shivered – never enjoyed that particular turn of phrase; the condescending looks, the feeling of being small when the rest of her was anything but. “As if you could ever be – what was it you said? – just a traveller.” 

She snarled up at him as a tirade of bounding footsteps sounded nearby. 

“Doc, what’s going on?” Graham’s voice echoed out from the hall as he stumbled into view, Ryan and Yaz on his heels. 

“Oh,” Eyebrows cast the Doctor a knowing look; raised eyebrows and feigned innocence. “You’d better explain,” he smirked, “Doc.” 

“Who’s that?” Yaz asked, gazing up at the man on the platform. He clasped his long-fingered hands together in front of him.

“And look at this,” he crowed, casting his arm through the air in a theatrical gesture. Giving a lecture. “Your companions,” he grinned. “No wait –” he stopped and pivoted back to face the Doctor, face screwed up in mock-concentration, “– not companions. No, no, you’re beyond that now, aren’t you? Companions, you’re right,” he waved his hand in dismissal, “that’s far too old-fashioned, and you’re not about old fashioned anymore. You’re young – look at you,” he paced around her, gazing down his nose, uncomfortably close. “These are your friends – your bezzie mates – isn’t that right?” In a flash of blue, he disappeared, slashing the air around him into warbled static. 

“Let’s get acquainted!” a jovial voice cried. A youthful voice. In an identical spasm of light, her previous face appeared – clothed in tweed and a red bowtie. He jumped down off the raised central platform of the console with his arms thrown wide. “Ryan!” he cried, dashing towards her friends and clapping Ryan on the back. “Graham!” he launched at Graham and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him intensely while grinning wide. “And Yaz,” he smirked, softer. To the Doctor’s horror, he swept past Yaz and grabbed her wrist, looking up at her as he leant down and planted a soft kiss on the back of her hand. He winked as he straightened up. Yaz stared back, horrified, as he swung back around to face the Doctor, flashing her a daring smile. Behind him, Ryan and Graham were looking up at the Doctor in utter confusion. Chinny clapped his hands and rubbed them together as he bounded back up onto the platform. “Now, now, now,” he smiled, “Doctor.” A wink, “been a while.” 

“It has,” she said, cold. 

“Gotta say, you look even more ridiculous than me – and the suspenders,” he stuck his thumbs under his own red braces as he careened around her, towering, jutting out his slab of a chin. “Please,” he whispered, “be original.” 

“Doctor, what’s going on? Who is he?” Yaz asked.

“Yeah,” Ryan added, “and who was that other guy?”

She didn’t take her eyes off the Dreamlord as her expression deepened to a quivering scowl. “He’s no one.” 

He gasped; “no one! Now that’s a bit offensive – I’m very offended,” he turned to face her friends, “is she always this standoffish? I suppose she hasn’t even told you rule one – do you know what it is?” Again, he jumped down to the lower level, reaching out his thin, gangling arms to pull the three of them into a sort of huddle. They stepped back, but he leant in, with dark, narrowed eyes. “The Doctor lies.” In a flash of electric blue, he disappeared. 

“Doctor, what’s going on?” Yaz asked; urgent, shaken.

“Don’t worry Yaz,” she beamed, fumbling to regain her usual confidence. “Just a dream.”

Her three friends exchanged a disbelieving glance. “It don’t feel like a dream,” Graham answered. 

“Well,” a bright, harsh voice called, “it wouldn’t – well, it might, a bit, if you were cleverer – which you’re not.” The next one back – all trailing trench coat and dark spiked hair – was leaning against one of the amber pillars surrounding the console, throwing his blue-tipped screwdriver up into the air and catching it. Restless. “But yes, you are dreaming, and that – Yasmin Khan – is who I am.” He snatched the screwdriver out of the air halfway along its journey downwards and stepped towards the Doctor, his long coat trailing behind a brown pinstripe suit. 

“How do you know my name?” Yaz asked. 

He grinned, eyebrows raised, and leant forwards. “Because I’m brilliant!” A pause, during which all three of them stared up in confusion. “Well, actually, they call me the Dream Lord – bit like a Time Lord, really.”

Graham narrowed his eyes. “Like the Doc,” he frowned, and shot a look her way, “what does it mean, though, really – you never said.”

“Oh,” he gaped, eyes and mouth hanging open. He glanced back at the Doctor and cast her a disapproving look. “You didn’t tell them.”

“What are you on about?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, tell us what?” Yaz echoed. 

“Didn’t do the whole speech?” he asked, mockingly, striding towards her and pacing, hands stowed in his pockets. “Didn’t do the big bombastic reveal? The wistful lament of times long past? No, curse of the Time Lords, nothing?” His nose twitched, cocking his head to one side with a shrug. “Shame, that was always my favourite part.” 

“Oh, I know,” the Doctor grumbled.

“But of course, you’ve grown! You’ve changed. You’ve gone sauntering off,” he sneered, “out of the fire. The rest of us left behind. Dead,” he spat, forgotten.” 

“What’s he talkin’ about?” Graham’s turn. Too many questions. 

She winced, and the Dreamlord noticed. Everything she was feeling, he noticed. “Look at that – brilliant, that is,” he grinned, again sweeping over, again towering. She shrunk in on herself almost on instinct. “I thought questions were good, Doctor, thought you loved them asking questions. Maybe then, but not anymore – not now that you’ve got so much blood on your hands, so much grief in your hearts.”

“Stop talking.”

“Me! Stop talking – ha!” he reeled back on his heels, cackling at the amber hollows above. “Not likely. Not likely for you either, because if you keep on talking about nothing at all then none of the nasty bits will come out,” he cast a sideward glance at her friends, slack faced, the twists of their mouths laced with contempt and confusion, so many questions held back. 

“Doctor, please just tell us what’s happening!” Yaz cried, growing impatient. 

“You’re dreaming, like she said,” the Dreamlord explained. “For once, she was actually telling the truth. You’re dreaming and I’m the Dreamlord – get how this works. Stick with me, Yaz, because I control,” he winked, “everything.” He disappeared in his usual flash of light. 

Yaz shuddered. “Why is he talking like – like him?” she asked. There was an echo of an old horror on her face; standing on a plane as a timer ticked down, as the Doctor lost control for the first time. 

“Because it’s psychic pollen,” the Doctor explained, rigid, without her usual air of enthusiasm and wonder. “It’s feeding off of us in a dream state. I’ve dealt with it before.” 

“How did you beat it last time?” Ryan asked. 

“I died,” she said, simply, and to their horror. “You know how it goes, die in a dream, you wake up in reality. Last time, I blew up the TARDIS, and everything was fine.”

“Right,” Graham clapped his hands, a grim expression on his face. “So, let’s get to blowing ourselves up then.” 

“Then you can explain yourself – properly,” said Yaz, eyes blazing. Accusing. 

“Right, you could do that, blow yourselves right up –” in another burst of light, the next one back appeared, standing behind Yaz. She jumped as he strode past, grinning, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Except you won’t.”

“Why’s that then,” Ryan asked.

“Why don’t we ask the Doctor – she loves questions.” he glared at her, grinning. 

“Because it’s evolved, or adapted – I don’t know how, but it has. It’s burrowed deep – and not just into the TARDIS this time. It’s inside our heads, like a parasite,” or a dream crab, she remembered, except this dream wasn’t going to kill them nicely. “It’s wired into the nervous system of every one of us. It’s not just observing and mimicking, its hold is deeper than that now. We’ve been infected for a while, and it’s been waiting, studying us. The energy of the time vortex acted as a catalyst.” she smiled, small and sad. “Five days, five planets – it’s had quite the wind up.” 

“So how do we wake up?” asked Graham. 

“Go on then,” the Dreamlord said in a bored voice. “Spell it out for the stupid apes.” 

The Doctor ignored him, her expression resolute. “We don’t.” she sighed, “we’re already dead.” 


	2. Dreaming/Dying

“We can’t be dead,” Yaz murmured. “I’m alive, I can feel it.” 

“And look at this one,” the Dreamlord teased, still wearing the weathered, brooding face of her ninth incarnation. Well, the tenth, but she never had counted Granddad. He swept around to face Yaz, surveying her with a steely expression. “Very pretty, isn’t she Doctor.”

“Get away from her,” the Doctor spat.

“She’s – what – nineteen, twenty? Dissatisfied with her life and her job, wants  _ more _ ,” he sneered. “Sound familiar?” 

“Shut up.”

“Now hold on,” Graham blustered, “how can we be dead? We ain’t dead, I’d know!” 

The Dreamlord chuckled. “Well, for the record, you really wouldn’t,” he said, arms folded. “You aren’t dead yet, but you’re as good as. So, let’s have some fun in your final moments, shall we? Let’s make your deaths fantastic!” He dissipated again, leaving the Doctor wary of the next – the one that had never really been the Doctor at all. 

“Doctor, please, tell us there’s a way out of this,” Graham pleaded. 

She scowled, though not at him. “I’m working on it.” 

“Working on it, are you.” Another one. The Doctor rolled her eyes. From behind a pillar, the Warrior stepped, clothed in battered leather and worn skin. White hair and a grizzled expression; eyes that had seen the very worst of the universe, and hands that had done worse still. 

“Are we really going to go through the whole bloody countdown?” she cried, growing impatient. She’d rather the parasite just get it over with and kill them already. She supposed she only had herself to blame for it’s insolence. It was, after all, only mimicking her. 

“I rather think so, yes,” he grumbled, “it would be rude to leave anyone out, they all have quite a lot to say to you.” 

“Why does this dream fella keep changing his face?” asked Graham. 

“Ah yes, changing my face, quite the ability,” he mused. “Remind you of anyone?” 

“Please don’t,” the Doctor hissed. 

“Oh, I know, you’ve moved on,” he chided, again pacing around her, surveying her. “I’ll ask you again, where can you possibly be now that you can forget about everything you’ve done? Skull Moon, the Nightmare Child, the Tantalus Eye –”

“I said,  _ don’t,”  _ she spat, with a onyx glare in her eyes, tough as steel. 

“There it is,” he smiled, a pressed and weathered grin slotted amongst his white, wrinkled skin. “There’s the cruelty, there’s the malice. There’s the Doctor of War.” He paused, relishing in her dumb-faced terror. “And Gallifrey,” he smiled. “When the time came for us to seal it away, you weren’t there. Now, tell me, why was that?”

Her expression hardened to stone, her lips pressed shut and immovable. 

“Oh, I’m just teasing, of course I know” he chuckled, “– but they don’t. Will you tell them the real reason you’ve been so quiet, so cruel of late?”

“What’s he talkin’ about?” Graham again. She didn’t look at him, couldn’t take her eyes off the Warrior, the Dreamlord, the one she promised to scour from her history because of the shame his eyes stirred in her. 

“Shall I get rid of them for you?” the Dreamlord asked. “I’ll admit, in my tenure, I never had the patience for companions. Go on, I’ll make it easier for you, stop their questions.” He snapped his fingers, and the Doctor watched as her three friends swayed and stumbled on the spot, clutching their ears.

“Why are there…” Ryan whispered, “birds?” They collapsed to the ground in a still, terrified heap. 

“Where did you send them?” the Doctor asked. 

“Out of the way – just where you like them. Now,” he cried, walking up to face her, gaze boring in. “You’re worse than those other two – Mr Regret and Mr Forget. You’re truly ludicrous, do you know that? Always so happy-happy, waggling your hands around and pointing that screwdriver like it’s a magic wand. And look at your face, your body – so young and small, and dressed like a toddler let loose in a shopping centre – who do you think you are?”

She clenched her fists at her side and stared up at him. “I’m the Doctor.” He smirked again before he disappeared. Down to the next one, now, counting down. Counting down to her death. 

…

Graham was lying on harsh metal, a familiar mechanical hum vibrating beneath his back. He stared up, shaky and bleary-eyed. A great circular chamber; deep blue, with round beads of orange light on the walls. In the centre; a metal ring inscribed with strange circular symbols, topping a large cylindrical structure of pale glass encasing bulbs of shifting golden tubes, heaving up and down like lungs. A control panel ringed the base of the cylinder in sharp, jagged shapes, all metal sheen and mismatched blocks of buttons and levers. A proper alien spaceship. Faintly, he heard the sound of twittering birds receding into silence. Far more pressingly, he remembered the Doctor saying that all of them were dreaming. Dreaming, and dead. 

“I see you’re up,” a gravelly voice called. Graham glanced up at the higher level of the chamber; a metal railed mezzanine crowded with bookcases. A woman was sitting at a stuffed leather armchair, a paper bag of chips in her arms. She wore a vibrantly patched denim jacket and a bright smile. “Come on up here, have some chips.” 

“Who are you – what is this place?” 

“My name’s Bill, and this,” she raised a hand and swept it around the vicinity, “is the TARDIS.”

He scoffed. “This ain’t the TARDIS, the TARDIS is all orange and glowy and full of crystals.”

“Maybe yours is, but not mine. This is an older version – the TARDIS hangs onto them, like backups on a computer. This one came before yours – just like my Doctor came before yours.”

He struggled to his feet and made towards the girl – Bill. “How’d you mean, your Doctor?”

“Before he regenerated into your version,” she explained. “Bit unfair of him to wait to turn into her until after I was dead and gone. Yours is way prettier than mine was.” 

“Hold on, you’re dead?” 

“Well, yeah,” she shrugged, through a mouthful of hot chips. “I’m not even alive, really, you know you’re dreaming, right?”

“Yeah, got that, love. He sighed, now making his way up a flight of clanging metal steps. On his way to the upper level he spotted a blackboard scrawled with chalk. On it, a question;  _ how are you going to win?  _ “What does that make you, then?”

“Someone from the Doctor’s past, dredged up out of her memories.” As he approached her, he could have sworn he saw a flash of gold in one of her eyes, like a star. “This dream analysed your mind – which didn’t take all too long, really – and matched you up with someone the Doctor used to know. Congratulations,” she grinned, “you got me!” 

“Right,” he smiled thinly. Proper confused. Well beyond confused, in fact. He sat on an identical armchair facing the first – one he could’ve sworn wasn’t there when he arrived. “Why you, then?”

“Well, I suppose,” she wondered, smiling in her confusion, “I’m here to tell you a thing or two about the Doctor.”

…

Yaz was sprawled amongst a muted golden glow, murky, turquoise light emanating from a rattling cylinder in the centre of the shrouded chamber. Tendrils of gritty stone laced around the structure, and beads of round light shone fluorescent from the domed walls. On instinct, she snapped up onto her elbows and gazed around, looking for an escape. Beneath her, the grated metal floors cut circular shapes into her palms, and beneath, a horde of machinery heaved through great tangled tubes and hunks of metal. 

“Hi,” someone said. Yaz looked over to see a girl sitting on a bedraggled foam office chair, wearing a maroon leather jacket, her dark hair pulled back tight. “I’m Martha,” she said; calm and kind. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Yaz,” Yaz replied, rubbing her temples as she got to her feet, still wary, still ready to run. Yaz to her friends, but there was something inherently friendly about Martha. 

“Come sit down,” Martha patted a similarly tattered chair beside her. 

“What is this place?” Yaz asked, gazing up at the high domed ceiling and the ring of controls at the centre of the room. It was familiar in its chaos; levers and dials and buttons placed seemingly at random. 

“It’s the TARDIS – a different one to yours, though. An older version.”

“And who are you?” she asked, approaching, but still reluctant to sit down. 

“I’m an old friend of the Doctor’s. I’m not really here, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m just a projection. Just a dream.” Her voice was so warm, her eyes so sincere and caring, that Yaz felt an immediate trust towards her. She could tell Martha was the sort of person who cared for others fiercely – the sort of person Yaz wanted to be, and hoped she already was. 

“Am I still dying?”

“Maybe,” Martha admitted, “but there’s nothing we can do about that just now. I have something important to tell you.”

“What’s that then?” Yaz asked, sitting down beside Martha and staring out at this old TARDIS. It was dirty; mashed together with junk and scrap. Broken, in a way. A far cry from the whimsical, fantastical place that Yaz knew, with its colourful lights and honeycombed walls. She knew that the Doctor could regenerate her body – she’d told them that much, at least – but maybe the TARDIS could change too. The Doctor was always talking to it as if it were alive, after all. 

Martha smiled, kind and conspiratorial; “something about the Doctor.”

…

Ryan awoke in a haze of white. A sparse, chrome space with circular grooves dug into the walls, radiating soft light. In the centre, a workstation of sorts. A sharp-cornered table housing a number of buttons and levers and built-in screens. He groaned as he found his feet, staring up at the seemingly infinite white nothingness above. 

“Quit standing around, will you?” a voice sounded, sharp and blazing. Ryan jumped and nearly lost his footing on the smooth surface of the floor. Someone had been standing directly opposite the central console, hidden behind the cylinder protruding from its centre. “Bit empty, isn’t it? Still, I like it better than yours,” she shrugged. A girl, he processed, as he took in the new situation. Mousy, messy hair, a jutted jaw slotted in deliberate defiance. She wore an oversized bomber jacket decorated with patches and pins. “Sometimes simpler is better – don’t need it to be too flashy as long as it does the trick.” 

“Who are you?” Ryan asked.

“Just someone the Doctor would rather forget – but that’s what all of us become, in the end.” 

“If I’m dreaming,” he said, sidling around the console to face the girl. “Why am I dreaming about you?” 

“Because it’s not your dream, idiot, it’s the Doctor’s,” she rolled her eyes. “Actually, it’s more of a nightmare.”

“Nightmare?” he repeated. 

“Yes, the Doctor’s nightmare – sorta proud I made the cut, if I’m honest.” 

“If this is the Doctor’s dream, then where is she?” 

“Doing more important things, I’d expect. He usually is.”

This didn’t exactly clear anything up for him, but he got the impression that this girl was enjoying making his life difficult, and that she was going to keep it up as long as she could. Instead he asked; “where are we?” and hoped she’d at least answer him that. 

“The Doctor’s old TARDIS, as you can see, used to be a lot more minimalistic. I’m Ace, by the way,” she shot out a hand in ofference. 

“You name is Ace?” he asked, voice skeptical, maybe a little mocking. Big mistake. 

“Yeah it is,” she stood up straighter, holding her chin up. Despite her being nearly a full foot shorter than him, he felt dwarfed. “Some kinda problem with that,  _ Ryan Sinclair, _ ” she drawled the name mockingly. 

“No, err,” he muttered, “no.” 

She smiled, jerking her head to one side, holding herself with an air of casual arrogance and tightly bundled energy. “So, as I was saying – the name’s Ace.” She smirked as Ryan took her hand and shook. “I’m here to talk about the Doctor.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo I wrote this last week and then the other day At Childhood's End came out and !!! I didn't even know we were getting it and suddenly I'm reading Ace interacting with the fam and 13!!! So cool!!
> 
> Anyway, I've tried to pair companions up with members of the fam based on their specific trauma and how it relates to the fam's fears in regards to travelling with the Doctor. It's likely that, come tomorrow, Can You Hear Me? will invalidate a lot of this character work but Oh Well


	3. Something About the Doctor

“And I thought I was bad, trying to outrun a war transcending time itself, but you’re worse – you’re much worse. You’re running from everything.” The next one along in the countdown was here. The eighth. Outwardly, the Doctor attempted to appear indifferent, as if every word didn’t sting. A pointless facade, because everything she thought, it knew. It was her, pulled out and twisted razor-sharp to hurt her. 

Again with the leather jacket. This one had been one of her younger faces, in the throes of a devastating mid-lives crisis. What did that make her, then? A new-lives crisis, maybe. New cycle, new me. 

“Come on then, love,” he teased, slouched against the console, running a hand through tousled curls. “It’s no fun if you don’t fight back.” 

Her lip curled;  _ love.  _ Oh, she really did hate it when he said that. “If you stop having fun, will you give it up and let me die already?” 

“Oh, I don’t think so. No, there’s still a fair few of us left – and I hope I’m not boring you. I know how we hate being bored.” He paused, giving her time to bite back. “I mean, how long did you think it could last, really? With all the worlds in the sky, all the people that hate and fear you – how long did you think you could keep dodging all those titles? Not many places left now that don’t know your name.” 

She glared at him, trying to keep her hearts from fluttering. No, not many places left. Not many places she could take her fam where they wouldn’t recognise the name Doctor. “There’s enough,” she said, and he disappeared. 

“But soon, there will be none,” a high, brash voice warned. The Dreamlord adjusted his coat with a flourish over his hideously-patterned sweater vest. He screamed mystery, in a way that was far too obvious. As obvious as the red plastic question mark on the hilt of his umbrella. He fancied himself one, too – a mystery, and more than that. Far more than that. “My dear,” he bristled, eyes dark and beady. Cold. “I must admit, I’m rather ashamed of myself.” His face was screwed up in vitriolic concentration, scanning her, eyes seeming to unpack, fold out, and plot like a map her very mind. He had always been far too unsubtle about it. She at least had the decency to hide that look behind a smile. “You’re running across the universe without an aim, without ambition. You have one of the most powerful minds in the universe and you use it for, what, exactly?

“Helping,” she said, letting her face fall into an echoing expression; calculated rage, loosely held. 

“Ah, of course. Helping. Saving a life or two, maybe even a world, here and there. Letting time guide you.  _ Non-interference, _ ” he snorted. “You could bend the universe to your will and yet you content yourself upon letting time meander along its dreary course. Such a waste,” he spat. “You act like some petulant child, why? To distract them, I think, distract them from your true nature. Things your little humans might call cruel. Things I call intelligence, power.”

“Both of which can be kind,” she said. 

“Ah, so you’re kinder than me, is that it?” he giggled, taking off his hat with a flourish, and dusting off the brim. He continued, eyes trained on his hands, with a casual air. “Stop lying to yourself – underneath all that childish rubbish you plaster on, even I know you’re too smart to believe a lie like that. At least when I played tricks I came around to the truth, in the end.” It was at this point that he looked up, a smirk curling hips lip and a glint like a steel-trap in his eyes. “Your humans still don’t know of this game you’re playing with them, do they? They think they’re in for a treat.” 

She stepped forwards as he straightened up. To her dismay, even he was taller. “I’m not tricking them.”

“Oh Doctor, we’re always tricking them. The only difference between you and I – the only thing your age has afforded you – is the ability to trick yourself.” 

…

“Ok, gotta ask you something first, actually,” said Bill. She leant forwards and offered Graham her bag of chips. 

“Oh, no thanks, love. I’m on a low sodium diet, you know, for me health.” 

“Err, you’re dreaming mate,” she grinned, “that isn’t your real body, and these aren’t real chips.” 

Graham shrugged and took one. “Can’t argue with that.” It certainly tasted like a real chip, in fact, everything in this place felt real, down to the low ache in his stomach that came with anxiety. 

“Right, question,” Bill prompted herself, fixing him with a warm smile. “What’s your take on the Doctor?”

“Well, I think she’s brilliant, so I do. Best person I’ve ever met, ‘cept my late wife, o’course.” 

Bill pressed her lips together in a sympathetic smile. “Sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks love,” he sighed. How many times had he had to answer that statement? It was the sort of phrase that required an acknowledgement, even though he felt it didn’t often deserve one. It wasn’t exactly original, just expected. Sometimes, he had half a mind to ignore it entirely, just to see if the universe would implode if he didn’t return a polite nod or a murmur of thanks, maybe a ‘me too’ if he was feeling dramatic. 

“Do you feel safe when you’re with her?” 

“Yeah,” he answered, easily. Maybe too easily. “Always safe with her, she’s great at gettin’ us all out of a jam, because trust me, things can get hairy, fast.” 

“Oh yeah, don’t have to tell me.” Bill’s eyes were glazed over, reminiscing. He knew the look well, but he’d never seen it so convincingly held on a face so young, and certainly not in a dream. “You know, I always thought I was safe too, deep down. After a while travelling with the Doctor, you sort of just stop doubting him.”

“Yeah, but it’s well earned,” Graham chuckled, snagging another chip. “After so many times thinkin’ all hope was lost, only to have her whip up a plan and save the day – gives you a certain sense of security. Faith, you know?” 

“Yeah,” said Bill. Drawn out, with a cock of her head, considering. “S’what I thought too. Maybe he did as well, after so many lucky saves. Everyone’s luck runs out though, even the Doctor’s.”

“Hold on, you said you were dead. You don’t mean – did you die when you were with him?” 

She nodded. “He was right there, just mouthing off like always. Talking instead of acting, thinking it was all gonna be okay. I got shot right through the heart – big hole,” she muttered, and traced a large circle on her chest, finger trailing the fabric of her brightly coloured shirt. “Right here.” 

“How old were you, love?” His voice was soft, respectful, like. He’s learnt how to do that, in all his years. All the years that she never got. 

“Twenty-six,” she said, large eyes staring off somewhere behind him. “And you know what, that wasn’t even the worst of it, because I didn’t die right away.” The chips lay forgotten in Graham’s lap. Disrespectful to eat chips at a time like this, no matter how good they were. “I was taken by these people on the ship. They replaced my heart with metal – this great big hole in my chest all cold and studded with bolts, heavy. Loud, when it pumped blood through my veins and those metal tubes.”

“He didn’t come and save you?” Graham asked, voice quiet, lost in the wells of her eyes as they stared, looking back. He knew what it was like to be so pumped full of chemicals, so wrapped up in tubes and wires, so dependent on machinery just to keep on breathing that you weren’t quite sure where the machine ended and your body began. 

“He told me to wait, whispered it to me while the life went out, but he didn’t come. I waited ten years.” 

“No!” Graham exclaimed, “but he had a time machine! How could he make you wait so long – and, no, how come he didn’t go back and save you in the first place!” Of course he knew, dimly, that there were rules. There were always rules when it came to the Doctor. Rules, as she had explained with empathy in her eyes, that meant she couldn’t save Grace. Her rules were never very consistent, though, especially when it came to violence, and revenge, and who deserved what. She never did explain, not really. Always vague, and always smiling. 

“Doesn’t always work like that. I know he tried, even if he took the time to give a little whiteboard presentation before he bothered…” her voice was quiet, trailing off. Bitter, in a way she seemed desperate to repress. He understood that, too, because doubting the Doctor wasn’t something you did, not when she was so brilliant. Not when you owed her so much. Even when she caused you a long, agonising death, it seemed – bitterness and doubt still felt like betrayal. “But I waited, and then the people down there on the ship found me where I was hiding, and they did a full conversion.”

“What do you mean, full conversion?” 

“I mean they carved around the heart and got rid of the rest of me. All my skin and bones all minced up and tossed aside. Brain in a jar, muscles threaded through with wire and stuffed into a suit. They made me a machine, stopped me from feeling anything at all. Only wanted to kill. I wasn’t even a person anymore.”

He gaped. “That’s – that’s horrible. I can’t even imagine.”

“He was too late. I held on for him, though, I tried to keep my head, remember myself. Fight it. He lied to me, even then. He said he could save me, and make me human again. Just to make me play along, I think. We both died there, on that ship, except he escaped. He said he’d die with me but he didn’t,” she shook her head; “another lie. He regenerated into your Doctor, and I see she wasted no time in picking up you lot. Trying to forget about me, I imagine, except she can’t. I’m here in her nightmare – but then again, so are you.” 

“How could she let that happen to you?” 

“Because she doesn’t always win, even though she always lives. It’s everyone else who dies. She can’t keep you safe, and she can’t keep them safe either.”

“Ryan,” Graham muttered. “I promised to look after him. What if…” it didn’t bear thinking about, but maybe it should. On Orphan 55, there’d been a horrible moment when he thought that Ryan was gone. Racing down the corridors on legs and with lungs that shouldn’t have been running anywhere so fast, or so desperately. All the while, his stomach plummeting, knotting itself up in anxious, panicked balls. The relief that had flooded him upon seeing Ryan safe and sound had been absolute, had knocked the breath out of him. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if his stomach had just kept on dropping, knotting, eating him up from the inside. 

“Do you know how long she’s been at this, Graham – did she ever say?” 

He shook his head, gazing down at the steely blue floor. “She’s secretive, barely tells us a thing, even when we ask.” 

“Getting on to twenty-five hundred,” Bill said, again, far off. So many years; Graham couldn’t even imagine. Despite her being an alien, Graham had always thought he was the elder of the group, even if not the wisest. There was the odd anecdote that proved him wrong; one-hundred and twenty years in the desert, being a white-haired scotsman – but those were all just silly things she said. At least, that was what he used to tell himself to stave off the discomfort. “Do you know how many people, in all that time, she’s let die?”

His mind went to Grace, and the willingness with which she had sacrificed herself, even if unwittingly. The enjoyment in her face, twisted. The first question that came to his mind was perhaps not the most apt, but it was all he wanted to know. Large, all-encompassing; “why?” 

...

“Could I ask you a question first, Martha said, “about the Doctor?”

Yaz nodded, curious.

“What do you think of her?” Martha asked, scanning Yaz with those kind, dark eyes.

Easy question. “I think she’s great. Honestly, she’s the best person I’ve ever met.”

Martha smiled, though there was sadness in the gesture. A longing behind the eyes. “I thought so too, when I met him. Seriously, he swept me right up into his world and took me to all these amazing places,” she beamed. “He was a right show off, galavanting about, mouthing off to aliens and being this brilliant, mad,  _ brilliant  _ hero.” she sighed, looking down at the floor and the malformed tangle of machinery underneath. “I loved him.” She looked back up at Yaz, eyes burning with sympathy. In her kindness, maybe it was more like empathy. “Tell me the truth, Yaz, do you love her too?” 

“No,” she said, too quickly and too sure. “I don’t know,” she muttered, mulling it over. A crush maybe, but it couldn’t be love. There were times when the Doctor looked at her, and their eyes exchanged a smile, or when she watched the Doctor with all her wild intelligence and sparking energy, and Yaz found her beauty overwhelming. All she wanted to do was be like her, be useful to her. Make her proud. “Maybe,” she added, quiet. 

Martha’s eyes were etched with understanding. “It’s hard not to, I know, especially when he flirts. He doesn’t know he’s doing it, because he’s clueless, but he does – so I expect yours does the same.” 

“It won’t ever happen, I know that,” Yaz sighed. “I mean, she’s an alien.”

“The worst part is, Yaz, that it might. It might happen, but it shouldn’t. You can’t let it, because it’s only going to end badly. You loving her is only going to end with you sacrificing everything for her. She’ll go bounding off, and you’ll never see her again. She doesn’t like watching people grow up, and she doesn’t do goodbyes.”

“She wouldn’t just leave.”

“Get out while you can, Yaz,” Martha reached across and squeezed her hand. Yaz stared back, disbelieving, overwhelmed. Martha sighed. “Tell me,” she started afresh, in a conversational tone, “have you got a family?”

“Yeah,” Yaz smiled, a little whimsical. A little homesick. “Mum and Dad, and a little sister Sonya.” 

Martha smiled in return. “Do they know where you are, travelling, I mean, with the Doctor?”

“They know I’m travelling, but they don’t know about all –” she waved a hand around the space; the heaving wheezes of machinery and the bluish glow of the console. 

“The alien stuff,” Martha finished.

“Yeah, and it’s not like I can tell them. They wouldn’t believe me.”

“They might be forced to learn, someday.”

“How’d you mean?” 

Martha’s eyes went glassy, far off. She’d seen the look on fellow officers, recounting a traumatic experience, something that cast their minds back into pain. “Have you met the Master?”

“Yeah,” Yaz answered, feeling a glassy sheen of her own take over. The panic, the feeling of the walls closing in, coming down. Fire and falling, and the look in his eyes, just as deep and hopeless and scalding as the feeling of it. Cornered, and the Doctor, lost for words. “Do you know who he is?”

“Not really,” Martha admitted. “Just know he’s a Time Lord like the Doctor, and that they used to be friends. There was this year, this whole year, that nobody on Earth remembers except me and my family. The Master became Prime Minister, he took over the world, killed billions of people and left the rest living in fear and squalor as he turned the Earth into a weaponised battle ground for a great war.” Her hands shook as she spoke.  _ Just a dream,  _ Yaz reminded herself  _ just an illusion.  _ But an illusion conjured from memory – from real pain. “He captured the Doctor and I was left on my own, wandering the Earth, trying to figure out a way to save him. He captured my family too, my mum and dad, and my sister. He enslaved them, tortured them, all that time… When the Doctor finally put a stop to it, turned back the clock, it was too late, because they just weren’t the same. They went through hell because I travelled with the Doctor, and they were the only ones who even remembered.”

At a loss for words, Yaz’s mind rested on something woefully insufficient; “I’m sorry.” 

“I know I can’t persuade you to stop traveling with her Yaz,” said Martha, voice no longer shaky and distant. Back in the present, determined. “But please, just tell them. And if the Master knows who you are, then he’ll know your family too. They’re not safe. They never will be as long as you’re with her because she’s got so many enemies, more than you can possibly imagine, and far more dangerous, too. They’d do anything to get to her.”

“Why?”

…

“Let’s start with a question; what do you think of her?” Ace asked, surveying him with a blazing stare. 

“Err, well, I think she’s brilliant. Best person I’ve ever met,” the line came out as if it were rehearsed. It was true, though, Ryan reflected. A sentiment she deserved, after everything she’d done for them, everything she’d shown them. “She’s really smart and funny, but she’s kind too – always gives the bad guys a chance, even when they probably don’t deserve it. And, well, I guess she’s nice. She’s patient. She actually treats me like a person with a brain and not just a stupid teenager with a warehouse job.” 

“Suppose she makes you feel smart, useful. Right?” 

“I guess.” 

“Do you trust her?”

“Well, yeah, sure. We all do. She’s our best mate.” 

“Best mate,” Ace scoffed, “that’s certainly a new angle. Be careful, Ryan, she’s not what she seems.”

“How’d you mean?” 

“I mean, she might act like she cares about you, but to her, it’s all just a game. She’s messing with you, all of you, and when she’s done messing, she’ll leave you.” She gave a light chuckle, looking down at her hands. “She mightn’t even leave you on Earth. Just get bored one day and leave you somewhere.”

Leave him, Ryan thought, just like everyone else. “But she’s not like that,” he corrected her, and himself, for daring to think badly of her. She was at that, at making you feel guilty for doubting her. She was too kind, cared about them too much. Too lonely and too innocent. Even when she got that deadly look in her eye, it was always directed towards someone else, so they were never forced to examine the depths of it. “She cares about us.”

“I don’t doubt that she cares about you, Ryan, but not for the reasons you think.” 

“What other reason is there? We’re just her mates.” 

Ace smiled, patronising; the way one might smile to a small child who’d just said something incredibly naive and optimistic, something that the grim adult watching knew was false but wanted desperately to be true, like believing in magic, or world peace, or a lemon-drop sky. Or that the Doctor was just one of their mates. “She’s thousands of years old. Sometimes, the way he used to look at me, I used to think he was even older. The Doctor always has a reason, a goal. Always using people like us.” 

‘She isn’t,” Ryan said. Deep and resolute. Unflappable, by his stolid expression, but Ace saw through with a sly grin. “She wouldn’t.” Inside, he was conflicted. He’d been conflicted ever since the Doctor had left them on a plane falling to Earth, and he’d sat with Yaz and his granddad in a construction site sharing the realisation of just how little they knew. More conflicted, still, since she had come back to them; quiet and cold. Ever since she’d tossed out the term Time Lord, her face grim and shadowed, and all of them had been a little afraid that she was going to leave them on Earth for good. 

“Tell me,” Ace smirked, leaning against the console, “how did she bring you aboard?” 

“She didn’t bring us, we just met her one night on Earth when there were some aliens about.” 

“Right, and she invited you aboard the TARDIS afterwards? Said she saw potential, wanted to show you around?”

“No, not at all,” said Ryan, indignant. Winning, because maybe his Doctor was different from hers. Just maybe, she was wrong. “She was settin’ up a teleporter to get her back to her ship, and we were helpin’ her out. ‘Cept then somethin’ went wrong and…” he trailed off, because he’d noticed the hungry, anticipating look in her eyes. Someone who was about to win an argument, or a hunter, watching a trap snapping shut. “And we all ended up gettin’ transported with her.” 

“Bit lucky, that,” Ace said, feigning disinterest. “I suppose some sort of adventure ensued, and there you were, bonded for life, indebted, probably.” 

“Oi, no, she didn’t mean to do it!” Ryan snapped, though he wasn’t sure why he was getting so angry at her. It should have been a simple enough thing to refute, except that it wasn’t. “I mean, we all thought we were going to die, and she was just makin’ it up as she went – no plan at all.”

“Thousands of years, Ryan,” Ace muttered, “she’s one hell of an actor.”

“No,” he said, because he refused to believe it. In his mind, he remembered what Ace said about it all being a game – sometimes, he reflected, it literally was. All her ‘smart boy’s and gold stars and ‘10 points to Ryan!’– it was all incredibly patronising, really, but in an endearing way. At least, he’d thought it was endearing, until now.

“Okay then, point taken,” she said, looking as if the point hadn’t been taken at all. Still looking smug, as if she had won. “What happened next?” 

“Well, err, she had some trouble gettin’ us home?” But that was an accident too, it had to be. 

“But I suppose you ended up somewhere else exciting, and you all grew a little closer.” 

“Yes,” Ryan hissed, “but you’re still wrong about her.”

“So, she finally got you home, then what?” 

“Then, well –”  _ Then _ , he thought,  _ we were indebted to her. She’d saved our lives, shown us wonders, and she was lonely.  _ The loneliness had been awfully obvious, and each one of them had been itching to do something about it, itching to ask. Yaz had been the first to crack beneath that saddened, doe-eyed stare. “– then we invited her round for tea, there were some giant spiders, then she was going to head off, but –”

“She didn’t,” Ace finished. “Hung around, waiting for you.”

“No,” he corrected, blustering beneath her teasing eyes. Knowing eyes. Winning eyes. “We surprised her. Said we wanted to come with her – she tried to warn us off it!” he cried, as Ace opened her mouth to speak, a smirk already plastered across her face. “Said it was dangerous, said it’d change us, said it weren’t safe. We said we were sure.” 

“Gave you a disclaimer, did she? Peace of mind for her, I suppose. Trust me, Ryan, it’s all part of the game. The long, long game.” She sighed, looking down at her fingers as she fiddled with the console. “She’s been playing it much longer than you or me have been alive, and she’ll keep on playing it long after we’re dead.”

“Why would she do all that?” he asked, telling himself he was only asking her to poke holes in her story, to prove her wrong. In reality, he was curious, because he was normal. He and Graham and Yaz were just normal. Why would she ever do this to them, if not for simple amusement? That was what he was most afraid of, that it was just for amusement. Using him, tricking him. They’d already seen O – the Master – playing the long game, and there’d been something in the glint of his eyes that had reminded them all of the Doctor. What if she was just someone else who thought he was stupid? Just someone else who was going to leave him. 

“She likes to direct,” Ace said, simply. “She likes to move her little pawns across the board, sacrifice them where she needs to, play the universe like a game. It’s how she does it; lying, acting the bumbling fool only to yank the pretence out from under you, and go cold. All of her, everything she says and does – it’s all a lie.” 

All of it, he considered, but how much? The rules? The anecdotes? The reluctant admissions? It didn’t make any sense, though, because there was nothing special about him. As much as she always told him he was, he knew the truth. “Why?” he asked, again, because he was struggling to fathom the goal of this game. Perhaps he simply couldn’t, and that was worse. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for dunking on 7 so much, I know he wasn't like pure evil or anything, the point is the Doctor hates herself A Lot, and so do all the companions in her dark mind palace :))
> 
> also, I'm in the middle of At Childhood's End atm and !!!!! the angst!! SPOILERS but that convo between Yaz and Ace about how violent the Doctor really is, + the bit where 13 doesn't know what to say to Ace after everything she did aaaaaahhhhHH So glad I paired Ryan up with Ace in this


	4. Why

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to publish this last night but oopps

“Did you know, dear, you remind me a bit of me – and I promise I’m not being funny.” She stood face to face with her sixth incarnation. Glaring up at him, she was happy to say she didn’t see the resemblance. His coat and all its many hapdash patches of vibrant fabrics clashed horrid with the colourful glow of the TARDIS. It clashed with everything, really, but that had been precisely the point. Irritating, even from a distance. She liked to be noticed. “I mean, think of the way you began,” he prompted, eyeing her with a pompous expression, lips pursed. “The last one all noble, dying where he stood. A good cause, a dazzling end. Then, there we are, and we have to go on living, rather unfortunately for them and their memories, but wonderful for us,” he smirked. “And how different we are to them – just for the sake of contrast, I think.”

“At least I’m nice,” she muttered. She really couldn’t stand a lecture from him. She didn’t want to think about their similarities; the childish clothes and the colour, exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness. Take a bit of the serious edge off. Jarring, when her temper started up, when the cold crept into her eyes. It confused people, she thought. She liked the way they underestimated her, and enjoyed the act of proving them wrong. So had he. 

“Nice? Really, I thought we’d gotten over that already. You’re not nice, you’re just good at lying. As soon as things get just a little bit inconvenient, a little bit out of your control, you snap. You’re good at keeping it quiet, I suppose I’ll give you that, but it’s all there. Cold, cruel, short fused. Now that your little friends have started asking questions, they’re bearing the brunt of it, are they not? Be careful, Doctor, or soon enough they’ll resent you. They’ll want to leave.” 

Her eyes reflected bright blue as he spirited himself away. Somewhere nearby, the telltale zap of the next one. Home stretch. Five, four, three, two, one. Zero. Maybe she’d finally find some peace, because as of now, it was starting to hurt. Old memories came back stronger, old anguish. Things left buried dredged up with the sight of each new face, things left behind in the flames of regeneration. Either that, or it was the feeling of the psychic pollen cannibalising her mind, unfurling spores deep in the forest of her synapses, and burning them up. Either way, there were an awful lot of voices inside her head. 

“Hello,” the next face waved in jovial greeting. He skipped up from the lower lever to careen about the console. He held his hands a few inches above the controls as he examined them, dashing around the circumference. “Don’t know if I like this,” he admitted, the beige of his coat shining in mottled spots of orange and blue and pink from the surrounding lights. “How do you find anything?”

“I’m clever,” she said, eyeing him warily, waiting for the scolding to start. 

“Oh, of course, very clever,” he conceded. “Except I wasn’t talking about the TARDIS, dear.” And there it was. She braced herself, told herself that this tirade was getting old, tired. The truth was that the sight of each new face stung like a knife digging into an old wound, stitching itself over each time they disappeared, only for the blade to plunge in again at the sight of the next face in her dreary collection. A curator. “I don’t know if I like any of this,” he muttered, coming back around the other side of the console to face her. Oh, they all enjoyed their towering over, didn't they? Hands behind their backs, lapels crisp and coattails flying. A flash of blue, a bated breath, and the next. 

“I must say, I agree with him,” he said, stepping out of the light. His clothes hung from him in that deliberate, hapdash chaos, long coat and trailing scarf, battered and scattered on the wind. Hair tousled by chaos like a breeze that swept around him, and ignored everybody else. She was much the same, each new face a patchwork – pieces of those who had come before knitted together to make something new. More than the sum of her parts, she hoped, though often she felt like less. Hollow. Ringing out those tired pieces of herself for a new life, another round. “That head of yours, my dear girl, so cluttered!” he exclaimed, surveying her under a pale, bulging stare. “So stuffed full and swirled around are those thoughts of yours – how do you find a thing in that great, teeming mess. Too many memories in there, I think, far too many chances. Too many lives.” He grinned, reminding her of her previous self – split wide and wicked. Then, blue. 

“There was a time, I recall, when you shunned the idea of immortality – took a far nobler stance. Look at you now.” Regal, was this one – satin-cloaked and ruffle-collared. Staring down his nose with a condescending smile. “Do you even know how many regenerations you’ve been given – oh no,” he interjected, as she opened her mouth to spit a retort, “don’t answer, I already know you don’t. Better to end it all with the last one, wouldn’t you say? Honestly, it’s a wonder you even kept the title, what, with your determination to leave your past behind, to stamp out your own legacy. How can you, in all honesty, call yourself ‘Doctor’ at all?” Blue. It made her head spin.

“I really do hate to say it, dear, but he’s right,” the next one shrugged, bouncing into view. “A Doctor is someone who helps people, as I’m sure you’re aware, and you’ve done precious little of that thus far.” His face was crumpled into a comical frown, knuckles white around a similarly hued recorder. “There’s plenty of better-suited words you could’ve chosen – tourist, for instance. Maybe coward, or monster – any of those would do.” He brought his hands together, inclining his head. “Almost over now, my dear,” he smiled as she snarled, “and believe me when I say, I’m as thankful for that as you are.”

All the while, the voices. Memories, she thought, a past unravelling into a single moment. It felt like being undone, as if from the brunt of some temporal weapon. All the screams she’d ever heard, all the faces of the people she’d failed to save, or worse, condemned. Worse still, killed with intention. Her ears rung, head reeled, body swayed as if in a breeze. She felt herself slump to the ground, and struggled to hold on. 

…

“Why – well that’s a pretty big question – honestly, I don’t think she can help herself.” Graham blinked as a new voice faded into tangibility, the girl in the armchair disappearing as blue wavered into orange. Another room, though decidedly still the TARDIS. He was sitting on the ground instead of a chair, another upper level railed with steel; a catwalk, leading to the front doors. Over the edge, a glass floor housed greenish tubes and bronze wires beneath, caged like some leviathan beneath a watery surface. Different lights shone round and warm from the walls, bathing the room in a deep orange glow. He craned his neck to the source of the voice; male, quiet, a bite in his tone that clashed with an undercurrent of perpetual nerves. “It’s something she does to people. She doesn’t just put them in danger – though she does plenty of that – she makes them dangerous.” Graham located the figure of a man hunched at the console – one that seemed far closer to his Doctor’s set up. Cluttered, held together by sheer force of will with all its dangling springs and vacuum tubes, screens sticking out, levers reaching up over panels of buttons. Madness. 

“What’s going on?” Graham called down, struggling to his feet on wobbling joints. “What happened to Bill?” 

“Dream logic,” he shrugged. A slight frame, spiked brown hair atop his head. He wore a puffed polyester vest over a plaid shirt. “Guess it’s my turn to be the nightmare, sort of a lot of pressure, really.” He turned and looked up to where Graham stood on the upper level. “I’m Rory.” 

“Graham,” he acknowledged, making his way down the stairs. 

“Yeah, umm, I know,” Rory muttered. “But you asked why,” he prompted. “Like I said, I don’t think she means to do it, but she does. She knows it, too. I guess it’s up to you to decide which is worse.” 

“What are you gettin’ at, son?”

“She makes people a danger to themselves, because they want to impress her,” he shrugged. “The Doctor’s always waltzing on into danger, playing the hero, and people try to follow her example. Suddenly they’re doing things they never would’ve before, stupid things. Reckless things. Just to make her proud, or to feel useful.” 

His mind went to Grace, and the smile she’d given him before running off, a skip in her step, to her death.  _ Is it wrong that I’m enjoying this? Yes,  _ Graham thought,  _ except that, now, I enjoy it too.  _ He remembered the Doctor, walking towards Grace’s crumpled form, ran through with a deadly current. He remembered the look on her face; staring inward as much as it was out, aching – both in her gaze and her hunched form, shrunken beneath that bedraggled suit – like she was looking out at something terribly familiar. He saw echoes of Grace’s jubilant, dangerous smile in the kids – Yaz, most of all, but sometimes Ryan as well. How many times had he seen the two of them running right into danger, head-on, determined. No fear, when their bodies should have been shaking with it. More and more, the Doctor had been trusting them to go off on their own, saying it was safe ( _ eighty-percent sure, fourty – at a push _ ). It never was, not really, and every step of the way Graham’s gut was laced through with worry. 

“Ah,” said Rory, with a stifled, stammered chuckle, “the introspective stare. That, and the anxious stomach ache – trust me, spend long enough with her and both become a sort of permanent state for people like us.”

“People like us?” Graham asked, from far away, clawing back to reality. 

“People who can see what she’s doing. People who worry, ask questions when they all go running straight for the aliens. Deadly aliens,” he muttered, spinning a dial idly, “aliens of death.” He stopped, looking over at Graham with steely attention. “She starts letting people go off on their own, sending them right into danger. She says she can save them but she can’t, not always. She lies. All the time, she lies, and tricks, to keep you on her side”

“That ain’t true,” said Graham, thinking it very true indeed. 

“I think you know it is,” Rory answered, eyeing him sympathetically. “You can’t protect them, and neither can she. And,” he shrugged, looking down at his hands where they rested against the console, ‘if you want to save them, you have to leave.”

In the back of his mind, Graham heard birds chirping. A wave of exhaustion overcame him. His knees buckled, and his body hit the floor. 

…

“Because he’s the most feared being in all the universe.”

Yaz’s vision was dark, blurred. In the interim, she heard the sound of chalk striking and dragging across a blackboard with fervent energy, and a woman’s voice. Authoritative, teacher-like. Her vision adjusted to reveal a faint teal glow, sea-green and melancholic. The space was sparse, metallic, the TARDIS console (for she recognised the space as yet another incarnation of the ship) was sharp and ordered. Minimalistic; a little retro, maybe. Yaz was leant back against a line of railing, eaten fabric spilling foam no longer beneath her back, only metal. The grime had been scrubbed away to leave clean metal, and the heart of the console glowed bright instead of phosphorescent blue. Warmer. 

Martha and her kind smile was gone. There was a blackboard at the base of a flight of metal stairs leading down from the central platform. A woman stood before it; short, brown-haired, big-eyed, and brimming with energy. She smiled, white chalk dust on her fingers. Behind her, the blackboard read; Ka Faraq Gatri. 

“Who are you?” Yaz asked, though the sentiment was obvious. Another one of the Doctor’s friends from a time long past. It was almost funny, almost cruelly hilarious, that Yaz had once thought herself the first to fall prey to that lonely stare. The first to invite her round for tea. 

“Call me Oswin,” she smiled.

“Is that your name?”

“No, but it sounds sort of fun, doesn’t it?” 

Yaz raised a quizzical eyebrow, but didn’t press the issue. Dream logic. “What’s that mean?” she pointed towards the blackboard, making a slow and guarded descent down the flight of stairs. 

“This?” she asked, turning to face the words, “I believe it’s Dalek,” She clasped her hands behind her back and paced across the length of the board, chin tilted up. She reminded Yaz, in a way, of the Doctor, and her lecture-like explanations. “Don’t ask me how I know that – though I’m fairly sure I was a Dalek at one point, it’s all a bit hazy now. I only remember those lives in nightmares,” the final sentence was quieter, trailing, but Oswin quickly righted herself with a grin and a skip. Again, the mannerism reminding her achingly of the Doctor. Guarding pain behind a smile. “It means Bringer of Darkness – or possibly Destroyer of Worlds – it’s one of her names. She has an awful lot of them.” 

“One of the Doctor’s names?” Yaz asked, skeptical. 

“Yup,” Oswin answered, far too joyfully for the subject matter. 

“Erm,” she faltered, thinking she should try to be polite, despite Oswin’s strangeness, “my name’s Yaz.” 

“Yes,” Oswin grinned, “Yasmin Khan – Yaz, to your friends. I’ll call you Yaz if that’s alright, seeing as we’re friends now.”

“Yeah, sure,” she agreed, coming to stand beside the blackboard. For the third time, Oswin reminded her of the Doctor with her northern accent, dark eyes, and near-manic smile. “You said the Doctor was feared,” Yaz broached, staring up at the slanted words on the board. 

“Yes, terribly so, by a great many races. They have all sorts of names for her, none of which are very nice. But!” she clapped her hands, gazing up at Yaz with eager eyes, “we’re not here to talk about all that, we’re here to talk about you!”

“We are?”

“Yes! Today, Yaz – today’s your day. The Doctor’s nightmare!” she grinned, “and it’s all about you,” she tilted her head and pushed out her jaw, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She wore a knitted cardigan over a blouse and tartan pencil skirt. A bit prim, a bit impractical. 

“How can this be her nightmare?” Yaz asked. 

“Because I’m here,” Oswin beamed, “because we’re all here. All the hers and all the us’es. I’m sure you’ve noticed that she doesn’t hold much stock in the past.” Yaz nodded, remembering  _ (fine. What do you want to know?).  _ “Her nightmare, as I’m sure you’ve been piecing together, because you’re very smart,” she winked, “is nothing but the truth, and the past, and her new best friends finding out all about it.” 

Finding out that she was feared, that the simple act of travelling with her was putting her family in danger every moment of their lives. Enemies like the Master, maybe even worse, all clamouring to get their hands on her. Afraid of her. The Bringer of Darkness, Destroyer of Worlds. 

“You’re a little bit in love with her, I think,” Oswin ventured. Yaz was too drained to refute it, or perhaps it was that there was enough truth in the statement for her to let it slide. “Whether it’s the idea of her or the woman herself – you’re taken by it. How could you not be, with all the things you’ve seen? Enter: the Doctor; dispenser of justice on an intergalactic scale – morally right, ethically assured.” It certainly always seemed that way to Yaz; the Doctor was patient, she was kind, but she was ruthless. She was always sure, and she was always right. “It’s all you’ve ever wanted to be,” Oswin smiled, as if reading her thoughts. “You’re leading two lives, never quite separate. One always staining the other, fighting the other. My life – or lives – they used to be the same. Clawing at each other’s throats. I couldn’t choose.”

“I don’t think I can choose either,” Yaz admitted. Real life – Earth life – and the TARDIS, which felt like escapism despite its reality. She couldn’t choose. Life with the Doctor was fantasy, in a way, because she couldn’t exactly tell anyone else about it, it didn’t ring true with any sort of logic she’d grown up with. She couldn’t write it on her resume or list it as a hobby, even if it was one. Her only one, really. It was as good as getting lost in fiction, a little world no one else could see. “When I was a kid I always dreamed of being a police officer, but now it’s not enough. I don’t think anything could ever be enough after seeing what I’ve seen.”

“It never will,” Oswin shrugged. It was a simple fact that Yaz knew, yet hearing it voiced sent her sinking, a stone dropping in her stomach. Real life would never be enough. “I was the same, Yaz, I wanted to be a teacher. He whisked me away from my life before I could get there. He left me, for a while, but he came back. Even if he hadn’t I would have always been waiting for the day. He was gone, for a time, and my life started moving. He came back, and it all just stopped. I had my dream job, dream life, dream boyfriend, but he was always there,” she sighed, a bit dramatic, “and I always loved him too. But I lost it all, that dream life, and I chose him. I chose him, completely, and I never looked back.” 

Yaz’s life was stagnant, career left by the wayside, family left out of the loop, starting to question. She loved them, but some days she just wanted to leave them all behind, dash off on an infinite sabbatical. Earth be damned. Consequences be damned. She wanted to do something real, as real as the Doctor. Flip the tables; reality becoming fantasy, and fantasy becoming reality. Wouldn’t that be nice? Fairy-tale nice – the sort with impossible heroes. 

Oswin continued, the piece of chalk held loosely in a slipping grip, and her eyes, slipping back. “I was addicted to the feeling of being with him – the surge of adrenaline, the running,” she smiled wistfully, “I got reckless. A bit stupid, maybe. A bit more like him, everyday.” She turned her wandering gaze back to Yaz, and in her eyes, Yaz saw herself reflected. “You’ve made your choice too, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Yaz admitted, to herself and to the apparition. Her voice came out in a choked whisper, words she didn’t want to admit, pushed out. “She’s my life.” 

“She’ll be your death. There’s only one way it can ever end; you choose reality, or you die. The travelling can’t last forever, because it’s just another escape, just another way to run from everything painful. The Doctor might be able to run forever, but we can’t. You have to choose, before fate chooses for you. Your family, or that buzz. Life,” she pulled Yaz’s hand to her wrist, and she noticed with a dizzying shock that the woman had no pulse, “or the Doctor.”

It was the last thing she felt, as the sounds of morning birds pulled her under, back into the dark – cold skin, without a beat beneath it. 

...

“Because that’s rule one.”

Ryan blinked up at the surrounding orange glow. It wasn’t gold, laced with blue and magenta and crystal spires – it was deeper, a blood orange, nearly suffocating in its intensity. Another version of the TARDIS. The girl who had spoken, under the light, had hair bright as fire. Ryan stood atop a floor of glass. Beneath his feet, the machine growled and hummed and chirruped, a beast of tangled cable and idling engines encased in glass. Gone was the stark-white and clinical formality of the previous room. Gone, too, was the smirking girl called Ace, replaced by a woman in a white nightie, sitting on a set of steps that lead out to the TARDIS doors. Her pale knees were nocked up like arrow points beneath her chin as she stared out, doe-eyed and miserable, at the console’s light. 

“Who are you?” Ryan asked, though he thought he knew the answer. Someone else that the Doctor had left behind. Someone else who’d made the cut to feature in her worst nightmare. A nightmare that somehow, he too was a part of. 

“Amelia,” the girl said, eyes acknowledging Ryan for the first time. “That’s what he used to call me, anyway. Since this is his dream, I suppose it may as well be my name.” Another girl in another TARDIS – how many faces had the Doctor had, exactly? 

“What do you mean, rule one?” Amelia watched him as he walked, and came to sit beside her. He kept a respectful distance between them, because he could see the way the girl was feeling in the way her pale fingers were twisted around one another, knotted in the fabric of her dress. Ryan knew how grief hung on a face, the way it twisted and tilted at your posture, your features. 

“He’s got a lot of rules, have you noticed?” 

“Yeah I have, actually.” Don’t go anywhere that’s just initials. No guns, no weapons, no revenge. Love a conspiracy, hate a conspiracy. There were lots of rules, but they didn’t always make sense.  _ Rule one,  _ Ryan remembered the pale, caricatured face of a young man with beady eyes, leaning in,  _ the Doctor lies.  _

“Don’t ask stupid questions. Don’t wander off,” Amelia murmured, still staring out into the light. “But rule one trumps them all.” She turned to him, “tell me, does she ever frighten you?” 

“No,” Ryan responded automatically. She was, outwardly at least, about as non-threatening as you could get. She dressed like a kid and smiled too much, and ran like she didn’t quite have control over her body. Bumbling, stumbling. Like Ace had said; a trick, a cover.  _ One hell of an actor.  _ “She’s the nicest person ever. Silly, too. It’s like bein’ friends with a super-smart five year old.”

“Yeah,” Amelia chuckled wistfully, “it is. Most of the time,” her expression hardened. “Sometimes, when he thinks you’re not looking, or he’s too angry to care, you can see it, though.” 

“See what?”

“The truth.” 

Mutinously, a bitter taste of betrayal like acid on his tongue, Ryan knew exactly what she meant. He’d seen it in the Thijarian hive as she’d smiled, spitting threats, and as she’d left Charlie to burn. He’d seen it when she’d faced the Dalek, smiling as she watched it burn. Again, as she’d watched his dad about to fly out into the broiling heat of a star just to kill it. He’d begun to see it now, more and more, whether because she was being more obvious or because he was better at spotting it. When she strode up to the Master, smiling at his fear as the Kasaavin had taken him. Five days, five planets, and the constant stony look in her eyes. When they’d asked her who she was, and she’d glared at them, icy, tightly-wound and closed off, tense, perched on the defensive and ready to pounce. Orphan 55, leaving Kane and Bella to die. Watching he and the others staring off, disturbed by the wreckage of their planet, and the way she’d lied about what she knew. Tesla’s lab, and the smile in her eyes as she obliterated an entire race. No weapons, no violence, no revenge. Unless you’re the Doctor. 

Amelia watched him with a knowing smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen him break them all.”

“What happened to you?” Ryan asked, bracing himself for the answer. She looked broken, as broken as someone could be while still drawing breath. 

“He did,” she murmured. “The Doctor was my entire life, ever since I was a kid. He was the story I escaped to, my hero. My faith. I waited so long for him, but my life was all just a part of his game.”

“What do you mean – if, err, if you don’t mind me askin’,” he added, clearing his throat. He should stop asking questions, maybe. Stop asking questions he didn’t want answered. 

“There were cracks in the fabric of time, one of them was in my bedroom wall. It ate at my life, my memories. Everything. There was an entire inter-galactic theocratic order erected in fear of him, did you know that?” her voice was vague, a slight smile tacked on just from the absurdity of it. “It’s sort of a long story, but, in the end, the cracks in time were a paradox created around two events, both of them hinging around him. His fault,” she choked, brown eyes reflecting the orange light like discs of fire. “And then there was this order, the Silence. They kidnapped me. They took my daughter, right from my arms,” her voice shook, eyes taking on a familiar look. He’d seen it in his father, a long time ago, and in Graham, and himself, in the mirror. Grief. “They tortured me there, genetically engineered and psychologically shaped my own daughter, and tried to turn her into a weapon. A weapon made to destroy him.”

“Why?” Ryan asked again. He was finding it difficult to connect the men he was hearing about with the woman he knew. Someone who could inspire such fear, and allow such cruelty. 

“Because they were afraid. Of him, and of his people – the war they’d bring back to the universe if he opened the floodgates – but their order was never anything to him. He sent them tumbling down like a house of cards with a few words. The games he plays, they never stop, and neither do the lies. I was with him for a long time,” she swallowed, grim, “but I learnt to hide the damage.” 

“It can’t be true,” Ryan protested weakly. “She’s just a traveller, you know, takin’ us places, rightin’ wrongs.” 

“A mad man with a box,” Amelia said, again staring, distant. “That’s just what she wants you to think.”

He mulled it over as the sound of birds dragged him away, slumped on the steps, metal digging into his back. Just a game, and him, just a piece in it. He wanted to believe they were friends, he really did, but it was hard, seeing all this, and still seeing her as one of them. How many faces? How many friends betrayed and left to stew in her memories? At first, he’d just thought that something was bothering her, but now it felt more like it was just her mask, slipping. That underneath, she’d always been this way, and always would. 


	5. Zero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok lads so WHAT ABOUT THAT EPISODE, huh!!!! I'm shakennnn and I also have a vagueish plan for a fic about it :))  
> I'm incoherent, I just keep thinking about Lord Byron's poem 'Darkness' that he reads at the end and... 13 is implied to be the darkness consuming the universe... as in bringer of darkness?!?!? fdkghsgfdhskgl Christopher I love what you're dishing out I CANNOT fjkhfkldssdgaf

“One more my dear, what do you say, hmm?” he asked, eyebrow raised, straight-backed. Lording. “Think you can manage it?” 

His voice cut through the cacophony of all the others, the first. She remembered it well. A proud voice, entitled, a bit snobbish in its persistent, slipping grip on Gallifreyan ideals. Superiority, non-interference. She was sitting now (she couldn’t muster the effort to stand) and had her head pressed between her knees, as if bracing for impact, in an attempt to ground herself. Ground herself in a dream – it was a ridiculous sentiment. 

He sighed, “perhaps you should never have left, you know. If you’d stayed on that miserable planet you could’ve saved them all an awful lot of trouble. Maybe, when the time came, you could have burned with them, eh? Wouldn’t that have been nice, instead of traipsing amongst the ashes of your home and skulking around your TARDIS.”

His words stung (or her words, as it were, her mind reflected back). They stung like fire behind her eyes and ash in her lungs, burning her throat. 

“I think your companions will be returning quite soon,” he said, pacing about behind her. “I wonder what your mind has shown them, though I rather doubt it was anything good,” he chuckled softly. “I’m afraid to say, my dear, the jig is up! They know all about the people you’ve hurt, and the faces you’ve worn.” 

In her mind, they screamed; all the companions ( _ friends _ , she corrected, fiercely) she had ever known. Even after all this time, she recognised every one of their voices, plucked them from the suffocating timbre of the noise, and listened, remembered. Unravelled. The burning of her mind reminded her of her death – all fourteen of them – though perhaps this would be the final one. It was, she thought, for the best. 

All of their faces swum before her eyes, just as their voices called her title, the one she wasn’t sure she deserved any longer. Doctor. 

...

Ryan, Graham, and Yaz all woke up, for the first time, somewhere familiar. The console room – their console room. It was deep blue and sapped of energy, the pillars casting great lengths of sombre shadows – but it was theirs. Their Doctor. Each of their minds flashed a different warning; a danger, a choice, and a lie. 

Their Doctor was sitting on the edge of the central console, crystal-hewn ridges glowing around its rim. She had her head in her hands, fingers sharp, clutching at her hair, muscles taut in her legs. There was someone standing behind her, an old man dressed in a black suit-jacket and baggy, chequered pants. A smile spread across his face at the sight of the three of them stirring, bright and malevolent. 

“Ah, here they are my dear, didn’t I tell you they’d be back” he said, smiling serenely, sinisterly, down at the Doctor. “I trust you understand what this is now –” he looked back over to the three humans, comprehension dawning, tasting like a rotten tang on their tongues. “Ryan, Graham, Yasmin,” he nodded, “– the countdown?”

“You’re her,” said Graham.”

“Her past,” said Yaz.

“All her other faces,” Ryan finished. 

They three were united in their shock, their disbelief. All of it made an awful sense; the different console rooms and their different shades, their different states of disrepair. The different people, broken, within them, the secrets they shared, and their roles in the Doctor’s nightmare. A nightmare that, by another name, might be called the truth. 

From her place on the ground, their Doctor looked up. Her face was cast murky midnight blue beneath the light of the console. She gazed at them, eyes wide and dark, through trembling fingers and sheets of pale hair. She was shaking, cowering; part fear, part anger. Heat and chill  _ (fire and ice and rage).  _

“Past indeed,” the Doctor hummed – one of them, from that long and arduous history. The first. “– left behind, suppressed, forgotten. And now you know of the sick cycle she continues to perpetuate; picking up stray humans to stuff into a hole in her hearts she’s never quite been able to fill. Watching them die or forget or leave or grow old. Forever, lumbering on. She wanted so desperately to hide all of this, didn’t you, my dear?” Their Doctor stirred, snarled, but didn’t respond. Words seemed beyond her anger – or was it fear? “But now,” he continued, “here we are. I think my time is up now. I’ve said all that I wanted to say. The countdown, I think you’ll find, has reached –”

“Zero.” A new voice. The old man dissolved into blue light as, from the top of the hexagonal-planed steps, a new form knitted itself together in the gloom. Their Doctor. Long coat pristine and hanging like sheets of sky from a slight and tilted frame. Her smile was sharkishly wide, with eyes to match. Her gaze seemed to curdle their very blood, and still their veins, and stop their hearts. This was what it felt like, they realised, to be on the receiving end of the Doctor’s wrath. From the step behind them, the true Doctor – the broken Doctor – stared up in horror. “Hey there fam,” the figure on the steps called, “let’s start things from the top – time to get it right. I’m the Doctor. I’m over two thousand years old – three thousand, probably, but I sort of lose track,” she shrugged, flashed them all an easy smirk that sent a prickle down their necks because it was so very close; so very close to the Doctor and closer, still, to the person she’d been emulating of late. Grim, taut, shrouded. Cruel. “They’ve got a lot of names for me out there, among the stars,” she began a languid descent, moving with that fierce, stilted motion of muscles that weren’t quite human, that didn’t move through the air or wrap around their joints in quite the way that they should. “The Oncoming Storm, the Bringer of Darkness,” she grinned with pride, spitting each new phrase with relish. “The Destroyer of Worlds, the Butcher of Skull Moon, the Beast of Trenzalore, the Predator, the –”

“SHUT UP!” 

Ryan, Graham, and Yaz whipped around. Their Doctor was standing - melancholy forgotten, left upon the step. All that remained was rage. Her fists were clenched, knuckles white, eyes blazing. “That’s not me, not anymore,” she heaved. “Not anymore, and never again.” Her words contradicted the picture she struck against the light; jagged, fuming, destructive. Dangerous (thought Graham), consuming (thought Yaz), and lying (thought Ryan). 

The apparition on the stairs titled its head and smirked. Then, in a surge of white heat, the metal around them burned, and the TARDIS exploded. 

…

She awoke with her head resting against the underside of the console, grease through her hair and grit under her nails. Working – as she always did when her humans were sleeping. Evidently, the work had become too much. Despite her determination to hide the fact, Time Lords needed sleep too. She winced as she detached her head from its resting place against the cold metal of the console’s base, a bruise already beginning forming there, and a tight ache stitching up her neck. As she sat up straight, memories stirred in the back of her mind, clawing to the forefront. Thirteen laughing faces, blue light, bird song. Her friends, terrified. 

Her friends, knowing far more than they should, far more than she’d ever wanted them to.  _ (You’re her/her past/all her other faces). _

Then, the heat like regenerative fires, eating them up and spitting them out into the void. A dream. But dreams could be more than what they seemed. Worse, dreams could be shared, and dreams could be remembered. 

That was the part that didn’t make sense; the fire. Dying in the dream, and waking up in reality – because it shouldn’t have worked. 

Something sparked beside her. Looking over in alarm, she saw a pile of silvery dust – the pollen – catch alight, and fizzle into ash. Catalyzed by the heat of the temporal engines, burrowed into their heads at some earlier point, left to stew and to learn. It should have killed them when the countdown reached zero, when it had drunk its fill of darkness. Instead, it had left its host and burned up, like some sort of suicide. Organisms such as that didn’t have a concept of such things, and so the question remained – why not kill her once it had enacted the perfect nightmare? Unless, of course, it had been tampered with, made to cannibalise the darkness within its host and then eject and burn itself away. There weren’t many in the universe with the skill, and the utterly bent, pointless ambition, to do something like that. In fact, she thought, there was only one.

In her pocket, her iPhone buzzed. She fished it out and clicked it on, blinking at the blinding flash. A notification from Whatsapp. She knew before she checked, but still she shuddered, and nearly dropped the phone in her haste to open the message. It was, to her elation and her horror, from a contact designated ‘O <3’. A single word; one that filled her with dread, with putrid understanding, and with hatred. Hatred, most of all. 

_ Kisses.  _

Her expression curdled to a scowl. His house – or his TARDIS, as it were – that was where it must have happened. Drinking tea, unravelling a mystery he’d planted for them. Looking for the spymaster. 

“Doctor?” A concerned voice called. Yaz’s voice. “Are you okay?”

She pulled herself out from underneath the console to see Yaz, followed by Ryan and Graham, walking down the stairs and into the console room. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she cheered, “must’ve dozed off during repairs, but I’m all fine now.” She surveyed them all, looking for signs of distress. Signs of fear. “You alright?” she ventured. 

“Yeah, yeah, completely,” Yaz hurried, voice high-pitched and too-fast. 

The Doctor narrowed her eyes; “you sure?”

“Don’t I look fine?” she asked defensively. 

“Yeah, we’re all totally fine,” Ryan added, unnecessarily, and a bit too forced.

“Right as rain, Doc.” Too cheery. 

“Excellent!” the Doctor chirped, as nausea twisted at her gut. She focused her mind onto the currents of theirs, hoping they wouldn’t notice the subtle intrusion. 

One of them was worried she would turn them into martyrs. 

One of their minds rang with the words  _ Ka Faraq Gatri,  _ and tore at an impossible choice. 

One of them was wondering why she ever chose them for her game, and how much of her words were lies.

And all of them were mortally afraid. 

She wondered what the darkness in herself had shown them, after all, there were so many possibilities. People like them, she suspected. People she’d hurt. Lives she’d ruined. Her friends, at least in the way she remembered them, all resented her, and rightly so. Her new friends, upon exposure to the truth, were scared, and she thought that was probably right too. 

Her worst nightmare, realised. It was exactly what he’d always wanted. 

They shied away from her scrutinising expression, eyes on the floor or on each other, fearful. “Right,” she clapped her hands together, causing all three of them to jump in alarm. “Where are we off to now, then?” She tried for the usual energy, and hoped they’d accept the offer. Both parties pretending, now more than ever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so, ends kinda abruptly but I didn’t really want to continue it because obviously some shit would go down after this but I’ve already written so much fam angst so I don’t think this would be anything new. Realistically I feel they might leave after everything they saw so... guess the master got his wish. Now she’s all alone with only her grief and anger to drive her. Bring on the time lord victorious babeyyy. All that can be hypothetical, since it's not really related to the dream sequence that was the initial premise of the fic... but what do you guys think the fam would do next?

**Author's Note:**

> The story is already written, and I'll probably publish every three days?? Sometimes I lack self control...


End file.
